


Poppies.

by Minochan



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Chapter 84, Chapter Related, Death, During Chapter 84, Gloomy atmosphere, Introspection, Melancholy, Sad, Sad Ending, Translation, Volume 21, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 05:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12126033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minochan/pseuds/Minochan
Summary: Berthold's death hurts me a lot. I love this character and he is my fav, I will never regain myself from his death.Volume 21, Chapter 84.Goodbye, My Hero.From Text:"Why don’t you open your eyes, Bert?Maybe are you scared?Where are courage and self-confidence that you had just before? They abandoned you in the same time that they took you away from that meat, muscles and hotness casing.You are back to be the insecure and fearful boy, one meter and ninety-two centimetres of nullity, doubts and insecurity.Or better, what remains of one hundred and ninety-two centimetres.You feel light, you miss something and you know this."





	Poppies.

**Author's Note:**

> SOME INFO ABOUT POPPIES:  
> Red Poppy is the symbol of forgetfulness, sleep of senses and heart.  
> The poppies, in the Anglo-Saxon world, are traditionally dedicated to the memory of the victims on the battlefields of the First and Second World War.  
> But earlier it is said that Genghis Khan, Emperor and Mongolian leader, always carried with him poppy seeds that spread on battlefields after his victories, in memory and respect for those who had fallen in honor.  
> The singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André for the lyrics of his famous song “The War of Piero” was inspired by this.

  
Goodbye, my hero. 08/08/2016 – 08/08/2017

“Sleep buried in a wheat field  
Is not rose, is not tulip  
Sitting up with you from ditches shadow  
But are a thousand of red poppies.”  
[Fabrizio De Andrè – Piero’s War.]

  
   
With close eyes, you smell the strong and prickly scent of blood.  
Probably, your blood.  
Next, a different smell, of flowers, come to your nostrils.  
How can be flowers in a place like this?  
Everything is destroyed, burnt, is impossible for a delicate and weak thing as a flower survive to a similar disaster.  
 _I’m going crazy_ , you think.  
You talk to yourself to convince that this is only a nightmare, result of your imagination.  
A joke, here is what it is.  
Your hear, close to you, people talk, but you don’t understand about what. And you don’t even care.  
You know that he is only a dream and tomorrow, waking up, you will not remember anything.  
Like every time.  
Nightmares on nightmares, blood, pain, the killed people’s screams that rumble in your mind.  
As if dozens of people with cold skin are clinging on you, asking you the reason of all that, the bed becomes too tight, you move, without find a good position, you sweat, you want to wake up but you can’t. Guilt keep you tied, gripped to the oneiric world.  
You woke up startled, sweaty, with wet t-shirt.  
You sighed. You hoped that nobody made you questions.  
You asked yourself when everything would finish.  
Now you have the answer, Bert. Open your eyes and look: the end on this story is just in front of you.  
For them, the end of this nightmare is your death.  
 _They are only deluded_ , you think, with a tiny smile.  
Despite his sixty metres, the Colossal Titan is not the biggest trouble.  
They would discover it, sooner or later.  
The flowers smell tickles your nose again.  
Why don’t you open your eyes, Bert?  
Maybe are you scared?  
Where are courage and self-confidence that you had just before? They abandoned you in the same time that they took you away from that meat, muscles and hotness casing.  
You are back to be the insecure and fearful boy, one meter and ninety-two centimetres of nullity, doubts and insecurity.  
Or better, what remains of one hundred and ninety-two centimetres.  
You feel light, you miss something and you know this.  
And is for this that you don’t want to open your eyes: you don’t want to watch the situation where you are. Helpless, unable to move, you can only breath, hear your heartbeats and wait your end.  
In your short life, is there something you are proud of? For what will be you remembered? But, primarily, _from who_ you will be remembered?    
Will your Mather and Father remember of you? Will they cry when they know you will not be home again? When will they know that nobody saved you but that, above all, you have not be able to save yourself?  
Will your mates remember of you? Who knows how they will react when they will discover that you've been defeated by a devious and smart strategy.  
Who knows if someone already knew how it would be end, what would be your fate.  
How did you imagine it?  
 _Now it does not matter_ , you say to yourself.  
Everything was already been decided, destiny was already written for you when the needle crossed your skin to reach the vein, when the piston pushed the fluid that mingled to the blood.  
And in that moment, the fate that was reserved to you was attached to you without ever leaving you, while the eyes sweated, the sight got faded and all became tiny, very tiny, seen by those two eyes too much high to belong to a child.  
You are only children but on your shoulders weighed something really too big to be endure without collapse.  
Everything they tell you and that you listened nodding, at your age, it resulted still incomprehensible.  
Even now, and you feel stupid for this, you find difficult to understand all those words, those complicated phrases.  
Of those thirteen years of live that were remained, you have lived even less.  
What did you regret, now, while you’re dying?  
That did you never believe in yourself? That did you never give to others reasons why could they be proud of you?  
You would not change anything of your life, but probably you would change something of you…  
When you will reborn, in a other life, you could be different.  
But if you remain with your feet on the ground, you know that now you can do nothing, you can’t come back.  
There will be no medals, no applause, no thanks and smiles by your compatriots.  
There will be no flowers because there will be no tombstone where bring them.  
But you regret of something, now, with close eyes, and you thing about it: that phrase on the roof, “I don’t care”, you said.  
 _What a liar_ , you accuse yourself.  
To find courage you lied to yourself. With your words you would have offend her, if she had been close to you… But there wasn’t, and there will be no more the moment when you will have her near to you. Because you will not be there again. You wish that, at least her, keep on living the time that remains to her with courage and head-on, as she always did.  
Did you wish to be like her, right?  
So you would have demonstrated to him to be able to take the situations in hand, to choose by yourself to yourself, to be brave.   
You would have preferred to go after you have demonstrated what you are capable of when you get the best of you, to him, the most important person that you will not see again and whom you are leaving alone.  
You two said that you would be dead together, you and him; you would have lived in company with each other until the last day of your bizarre –not sad, only strange- life. Die with the smile because you were together.  
 _Reiner, Annie, forgive me_ , you whisper soft.  
When you smell again flowers scent you find, don’t know where, the last crunch of courage to open your eyes. You open up them slowly, to prepare to the scenario that awaits you.  
Even though you felt ready, you can’t hold back the need to vomit. The instinctive action is to bring the hand on the mouth… But you know that this time nothing will rest on your lips.  
You would that your soul to abandon your body in this moment, it is useless to suffer like that.  
For the first time you think to be you to deserve all this pain.  
In the same moment, while you think this, you see, with the tail of the eye, not far from your head, a red flower, like the blood, moves at the wind rhythm.  
You recognize it: a poppy, survived to the destruction, sprouted in that clump of grass that grows on the roof.  
Some breeze will have brought there the seeds and one of them, even though the hostility of the place, managed to bloom.  
Is tied to his earth, as you are tied to your homeland, the one you hoped to return, sooner or later.  
It is tied to its roots, as you are tied to your destiny.  
Now you accept, without say a word, without blinking, the end that is waiting for you.  
You feel the wind tickles you cheeks, the body under your clothes, messes your hair.  
The flower secede under your glance, it is bring away, far from the place that, until recently, give him nourishment and salvation.  
With than head resting on the wood, you close the eyes.  
You see yourself in the vacuum, the oblivion, a big and empty black hole.  
You want to imagine that place, without space and time, with the smell of poppies.  
You fell your strength abandon you, you smile embittered, beaten.  
You leave that the tears furrow your cheeks.  
Who knows how much time will put that flower to dry…  
Who knows how much time will put you to die. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! This is a translation of a my work that I wrote in italian some time ago. This is a bit sad but I felt that way when I read chapter 84, months ago, and when I think about my little boy.  
> He is always very special for me and I love him a lot. He is my tribute for him and I decided to write about his probably feelings during that chapter, before being devoured.  
> Soon, I will publish some chapters stories on which I'm working in this period.  
> Thanks for kudos or comments, hope you like it... See you soon! Minochan :3


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